The Unknown Shadows
The Unknown Shadows OOCly: The Unknown Shadows are custom lore beings created by the Fifth Brigade (Fargus/Azeroc) and the same ones who sieged Stormwind some while ago. They are special and magical shadowy slimes, who feed on living organics to multiply and survive, they tend to appear as purely black tinted persons with shadowy aura around them due to bone material, which allows these shadowy-slimes to survive a lot longer and even take form of bone's previous owner. They are also the same ones who sieged Stormwind and almost overwhelmed defenses, however, turned to ash due to sunlight, making these shadow slimes to burn when in contact with ultra-violet beams/sunlight. The Unknown Shadows ICly: A powerful place of great titans was discovered in very southern edge of Azeroth. Located on frozen isle for thousands of years, was later discovered by gnomes many, many years ago. Gnomes searching for quiet and secret place to conduct experiments instead found a hidden compound under the ancient titanic structures, very similar to Ulduar. Several years later, after gnomes had pretty much prepared entire compound for research, they were also using some of the titanic highly advanced contraptions - most of them yielding fascinating results. Yet one of the contraptions had beaten all other, for gnomes used it to make strange dark portals, from gnome assumption - it was some kind of a plane-travel portal. Most of the time gnomes only found out that portals took them to some weird floating rocks, where skys were black with shiny dots, similar to Outland. 2 years later after using this weird rift-making or portal-making contraption, they discovered a portal leading to a world, which looked exactly like Azeroth, yet a lot darker and lifeless. Perhaps so called "Shadow Realm"? Yet still, nothing valuable could of been brought from these portals. Several more years later, as Second War had ended, gnomes made a party of sort in the compound, however, main leading engineer of rift-making device was still working and in the end, managed to overwrite some settings in the device and in the party's last day, the inciddent happened. Gnomes who were working during the party with the main engineer tried the new rift-making. They made a rift in a rift, making a portal to the assumed "Shadow Realm" and then made another portal in the "Shadow Realm", afterwards, connecting them both. Gnome team of scientists were ready to investigate where the portal would lead, however, as soon as they were connected, an unstopable wave of darkness came through the portal, overwhelming the gnomes and converting their flesh to the same dark slime material. For weeks gnomes tried to contain the infestation until only dozens of scientists remained from nearly a thousand. Most of the researched knowledge lost, the scientists initiated a "prison" command of the entire titanic structure, while leaving the frozen island, the horror put under a lock of five magical rune seals. The Darkness released once more Commander Fargus and the Fifth Brigade, obsessed with gaining more treasure, heard that a mysterious man knows a key to untold treasures. When a Captain of the Brigade contacted the man, he returned to Fargus with a full bag of silver and gold coins. Fargus pretty much convinced by the Captain prepared a squad and went to the mysterious man, who tested the squad first and ultimately created a strange portal. The Squad entering the portal found themselves in an ancient structure, where they fought unknown beings of pure arcane and magic, barely alive, they gained a key from the mysterious place and as they exited the portal, they were forced to give the key to the mysterious man or more like - warlock. The old man apparently was a powerful warlock and Fargus squad being heavily exhausted from the fight in the portal gave up key, yet to be betrayed again, as warlock disappeared with key and made his demons attack Fargus and his squad. Fargus and others barely killed the demons and made to Goldshire, later to be treated by priests for many hours. Commander Fargus, being very mad, made an agent of the crown to find the whereabouts of the mysterious warlock. Apparently, the warlock hired a mercenary ship to go the southern edge of the Azeroth, only few ship captains knowing how to sail through those unknown waters. Fargus, receiving the news, hired his own ship with gnome, who too knew how to sail through those unknown waters. Upon reaching the same old frozen island, the Fifth Brigade fought their way through mercenaries and climbed to the spire, where warlock had just breached the very last magical seal using the strange key. With last seal destroyed, the titanic structure or more like tower had holes bursting out, as endless streams of infinite darkness poured out and the 5th Brigade barely escaping with the same ship. The once imprisoned darkness, broken free. Shadow over Stormwind The Fifth Brigade and everyone else was doing... what they usually did, relaxing or working, celebrating or being sad. Either way, it all changed as the first alarm went off - Stormwind was under attack. In fact, the guard was so beaten in the Harbor area, that the military encouraged others to help them, who, obviously, can lift up a sword. Upon reaching the Harbor brigade and other fighters saw entire ocean being shadowy dark, skies throwing merciless thunderstorms and there they saw entire armies of shadow minions going out from the water, slaughtering every guard they could see. Commander Fargus and Commander Daffy issued soldiers to hold the middle-section docks. There were two defensive points, where the mighty defenders fought against the shadowspawns. However, they could not stop the endless hordes of darkness - they retreated to the upper section, where they faced even more shadowspawn until the biggest of them came forth. The size of the beast was enormous, none of the fighters could beat such a beast. Soldiers ran away with fear, the city was about to be swarmed with shadowspawn. However, the hope prevailed and as soon as the sun went up, the masses of shadowspawns burnt to ash, including the massive beast, who was hit heroically by Commander Daffy, and who barely lived after the battle. Now the Harbor's guard is tripled and with quick progression new defenses were built. Within just a day the Harbor was cleaned up, luckily enough - no more attacks. However, this event spooked entire Stormwind's military council and no one knows where these shadowspawns came from. Only Fargus and the ones who previously went to the uncharted lands had a suspicion of something, which may have sent this attack. Compound "Shadow" recovered information In order to stop anything such as Stormwind's harbor under attack, Fargus launched another ship with himself and others to risk and enter the compound, where orginally these dark slimes came from and successfully returned with information about the dark slime infestation. Madness Shadows Apparently, Madness cultists managed to dominated lots of these unknown slimes magically and now they have powerful close-combat creatures in their dark army, which are proven to be more efficient than any corrupted invidual by the Madness. The Unknown Shadow speculation These shadowy slimes seem to be very weak against fire and especially sunlight. Apparently, these shadowy slimes are controlled by some greater being, yet they are still primitive. A shadow magic user can dominate small patch of shadow slime - humanoid size, seperately. The bigger the slime mass is, the harder it is to dominate it with magic. From defenses, which gnomes in the compound threw against the slimes were outsmarted, meaning that not only these are just deadly dark slimes, but they also have ability to adapt. It is assumed, that highly adapted slimes might even be able to change color or even be able to speak or even make more complicated forms. However, these slimes cannot adapt by themselves, it would require a magical user to magically enhance them to help them adapt. Should adapted slimes come in contact with other, less advanced slimes, then less advanced slimes would too be upgraded with non-conflicting elements from the upgraded version.